Picture a group of hunters, some of them not so young, thrashing through the Ecuadorean jungle. Their quarry can be as small as a dandelion puff or as large as a tree.

The intrepid group is dedicated to finding, studying and preserving an exotic group of plants — bromeliads.

“It’s been a fascinating trip for me,” says Betty Patterson of Dallas.

She made her first bromeliad trek to Ecuador in 1985. She has visited about 30 times, has three bromeliads named for her and has worked on the translation of two reference books about the plant family.

Across town, in the Swiss Avenue Historic District, Lorraine Carroll has carried on a similar love affair with the exotic-looking plants. She also has been to Ecuador several times, once in a group with Patterson.

“I made my first trip when I was 60,” says Carroll, now 89.

What inspires such loyalty to a plant that can take years to flower and, beyond that, blooms only once?

Patterson says she is as much enthralled with the opportunities the plants have provided her as with the bromeliads themselves. “It’s not about having the plants in my collection,” Patterson says. “It’s about going to the areas and finding them and having the adventure.”

She remembers hiking 10 days with Ecuadorean guides on a trip for National Geographic. “We walked places even they hadn’t been before.”

In addition to her Ecuadorean trips, Patterson has visited other South American countries, including a recent passage to Venezuela. Also an amateur photographer, Patterson travels around the United States to lecture about growing bromeliads and share her stunning images.

The inveterate traveler grows bromeliads by the thousands in a large greenhouse behind her Far North Dallas house.

Bromeliads’ appeal

Carroll, who has grown the tropical plants for more than 40 years, is intrigued by their diversity.

Pineapples are a member of the bromeliad family. Spanish moss, indigenous to the Deep South, and tillandsias, also called air plants, are bromeliads. Small tillandsias, which survive indoors on tabletops and in wall pockets with a weekly spritz of water, are hugely popular as a low-care accent in minimalist lofts and midcentury-modern living rooms. Bromeliads “are a unique plant,” Carroll says. “They are a plant of the Americas.”

They are native primarily to South and Central America, including Mexico, and a few parts of the United States.

The thousands of bromeliad species are marked by their leathery, spiky leaves protruding from a central stalk. The overlapping leaves form funnels that hold water, making them easy to grow.

Some of the plants do well outdoors if well-watered, but they cannot survive our winters. Generally, they must be brought inside when the temperature drops below 50 F.

Greenhouses are a boon to bromeliad fanciers, but they have their own issues in a region that can be plagued by hail storms and high winds that rip branches from mature trees.

Carroll leans over to pull a dead leaf from a small gray-green plant in her greenhouse. A glint catches her eye and she carefully pulls an upper leaf back. There is a small shard of glass in the center of the plant, threatening to slice her fingertip. She plucks it out and drops it among the rocks on the floor.

The piece of glass is what remains of the massive hail storm that swept East Dallas and other parts of North Texas on June 13, 2012. Her greenhouse and many plants were severely damaged. Even though the glass structure has been repaired and plants replaced, she’s still finding sharp reminders.

In addition to the collection inside her greenhouse, Carroll has large baskets of dark-red plants hanging from mature trees in her backyard. They don’t look much like the bromeliads at nurseries and florists, spilling over the sides of the containers.

Bromeliads have become more familiar to the public over the past decade as commercial growers have learned to accelerate their growth and bloom, says Shawn Crofford, president of the Greater Dallas-Fort Worth Bromeliad Society.

“Even at Tom Thumb, you will go in and have bromeliads in bloom,” he says. “NorthPark mall probably has the best show of bromeliads in Dallas. They do a fantastic job.”

Flowers and foliage

Most who purchase blooming bromeliads don’t realize the flowers exist for only a few months, at most, Crofford says, and then never bloom again. Carroll says for most it’s just easier to throw the plant away after the flower fades and buy another.

For the patient owner, however, the mother plant will produce pups, or new plants, from the central root before it dies. Sever the pups from the mother plant, pot them in a loose soil packaged for indoor plants, and wait. It may be two years or longer before a pup blooms, depending on its species and variety.

Even without flowers, bromeliads are decorative and colorful. Their foliage ranges from soft gray to deep, almost black, burgundy with lots of pinks, yellows and oranges in between.

Even though Patterson and Carroll delighted in their Ecuadorean adventures, they brought home very few plants. Getting permits to import them can be difficult.

Carroll says she remembers watching as a few of her bare-root plants were inspected by U.S. Customs before being allowed into the country. “They really went over them — looked at the leaves and under them. It was a real inspection.”

Patterson said she collects specimens, presses them and sends them off to universities for classification and research.

Both women say they increase their collections by taking new plants from old and trading with other members of the bromeliad society.

They don’t buy many from commercial growers. Many of those are hybrids, and Patterson says hybrids don’t grow well in Texas.

Local enthusiasts and the curious can see exotic bromeliads from Texas, Louisiana, Florida and California at the Southwest Bromeliad Guild Show and Sale from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday. Crowne Plaza Hotel, 14315 Midway Road, Addison

Locally grown plants from society members will be for sale as well as specimens from commercial growers.

To see the best-of-show candidates, plan on arriving after 2 p.m. Saturday, after judging is completed, or on Sunday, says Shawn Crofford, president of the Greater Dallas-Fort Worth Bromeliad Society, which is hosting the regional show for the first time.